Delta dropping Rhinelander
 

Frontier will have RHI to itself after 9/5, as Delta (Mesaba) has filed to terminate serv ice there. Wisconsin Central -> North Central -> Republic -> Northwest -> Delta has served Rhinelander since the 1940's...before Green Bay even had commercial service.

Part of this may be due to the retirement of the Saab 340's, although NW* and now DL* fly CRJ's into Rhinelander on some flights. If Delta decides to let their EAS markets go, there could ther marekts within reasonable RJ range of MKE that will come up for bid.

At any rate, traffic in Rhinelander will undoubtedly grow, likely justifying ERJ or perhaps even a 3rd flight. RHI service is unsubsidized, although the two IWD-RHI-MKE flights pay a subisdy for the IWD-RHI leg, essentially.

Back when Skyway flew IWD-RHI-MKE with the BE1, Ironwood complained that flights filled up too often with RHI traffic with no seats left for IWD traffic. Hopefully IWD does not have the same problem going forward.

That's good news! I was thinking about it last night and it might not be a bad thing for F9 to actually expand the ERJ service at MKE a bit. The birds have low acquisition cost and without direct competition they should be able to achieve the fare premium that the ERJ was meant for. Maybe sending one of the R/T to GRR to SBN instead, and trying some of the other small Midwest cities would help F9 lock in its position in the MKE market. If they can break even on the feed flying it would surely help the chances for some of the longer markets to return in the future.

I'm thinking markets like EAU, DLH, SBN, GYY, TOL, BMI, BUF maybe even FAR? Places where surely WN won't go within the next 5-10 years.

The F9 ERJ-135s to MKE have about the same capacity as the Saab 340s, but less fuel efficient and faster. I wish we could AA or UA to fly here (as UA used to from Chicago in the 90s). As someone who resides 40 minutes north of RHI, driving south to get affordable airfare just sucks.

http://www.wjfw.com/stories.html?sku=20110609165143 has the story about DL leaving RHI.


IIRC Frontier doesn't fly its own scheduled passenger planes to CWA -- which some RHI area people use -- and yet it has staff there working for AA. Perhaps AA will again pull out of there.

By the way, this de-prioritization of the area is going to be hard to undo since people's sentiment toward (then-US Congressman) Dav e Obe y in the region changed so much that he didn't even decide to run for re-election. That reality TV show replacement for him won't do the area any good, as there's a lot of lost clout that comes from having surrendered the chairmanship and/or ranking member status in House Appropriations.

The loss of DL is going to make international travel a lot harder on RHI area customers who want/need to fly internationally.